Fiber mat material is widely used as a cushioning or padding material in a variety of products such as upholstered furniture, and bedding and quilting products. Typically, such fiber mat material comprises unbonded non-woven synthetic fibers and assumes a generally high loft, low to medium density character.
Typically, fiber mats are placed directly into products without any covering or sheathing. In certain situations, the individual fibers from the fiber mat tend to migrate and penetrate the covering of the product itself. This is, of course, undesirable. To counter this problem, it is known to apply a scrim type material to one side of an unbonded non-woven fiber mat. In particular, it is known to stitch the scrim to the fiber mat by simply penetrating the scrim and the fiber mat with a series of needles. In such a needle stitching process, the needles repeatedly pierce the scrim and move down into the fiber mat, after which the needles are retracted. In this process, fiber is pulled from the mat through various needle openings in the scrim and this tends to couple the scrim to the fiber mat. In addition, it is known to stitch scrim to a fiber mat by a conventional stitching technique. This is typically carried out on a Fales stitching machine.
However, these needle stitching processes are not totally satisfactory. First, with either stitching process, the fiber mat is compressed and accordingly the mat looses some of its loft. That is obviously undesirable. Secondly, the scrim is only attached at certain points. This obviously results in the scrim assuming a wrinkled surface about one side of the fiber mat. More importantly, the scrim that is simply needle stitched to the fiber mat and is not firmly attached and is prone to becoming separated from the fiber mat.